Livin’ it up at the Hotel California (October '18) Day 1 - Travel to San Francisco and exploring!

[oh_darling]

‘You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave!'


Day 1 - Travel to San Francisco and Exploring!


Travel day was FINALLY HERE! After so much planning and research it was finally here. Now, this may shock you but we actually didn’t stay in an airport hotel the night before our flight. I know, right? Crazy. Basically, Heathrow is like half an hour from our house and it really wasn’t necessary, plus Ben quite rightly pointed out multiple times that the cost of said hotel and dinner and drinks, however cheaply I assured him I could do it, would still be a lot more than we’d spend if we just stayed at home. He was absolutely right and actually it was nice to be at home all excited and waking up all excited and getting on our way

Our alarm went off at 4.30am which wasn’t ideal because we went to sleep at midnight due to the need to watch the finale of The Bodyguard before we went away (WHICH WAS AMAZING BTW) #noregrets but also some regrets because we could really have done with a little bit more sleep than that. Anywhoo, up we got and got ready. My hair and makeup didn’t go smoothly but it didn’t really matter because I was going to be on a plane for the majority of the day and who looks good on a plane anyway!?

I did have fabulous nails though as I got them done the day before with a voucher that was a birthday gift from my work colleagues

We were ready to go at 6am, slightly later than we’d planned because of me, and set off to my colleague Coral’s house. She was flying to Tokyo an hour after we were flying to Cali, from a different terminal, so we offered to give her a lift which she was chuffed about. We then got to the car parking place at 7 am and there was a minibus ready to go which was awesome! Benj went and gave them our keys etc and then the 3 of us hopped in the bus. We were pulling up at T2 at 7am so it all worked out pretty perfectly!

We said goodbye to Coral and I have such a strong memory of her walking off on her own with her little case to get the shuttle to her terminal! Bless her And then it was just the 2 of us! I was feeling soooooooo excited now

We did self check in which was mega speedy and printed our own labels; each case was approx. 18.6kg which we were chuffed about as we’d expected the worst! As you do! This meant we could bring some FOOD BACK wooooo! It was a bit weird though as our scales at home said 16.7 so obvs they are not accurate, must remember for next trip!

We went through security all fine and dandy and we were wandering out into the terminal before we knew it. I love this bit of travel day, feeling the anticipation of breakfast and excitedly checking out some of the shops knowing you’re jetting off somewhere fabulous

We had a quick wander around then settled on Wondertree for some brekkie. It was busy but we got a good spot with views out of the window.

As soon as we sat down the waitress bought the guy next to us the most amazing sizzling skillet of goodness with big chunks of chorizo on it. I said to Benj that looks amazinggggg, chorizo is my weakness and possibly the reason I’m not fully veggie. However, I thought something else on the menu sounded nicer (it had cheese in!) so I went for that but instantly had dish envy when mine turned up and it had sad, thin little slices of chorizo on rather than the big chunks. Sigh. Anyway, we both ordered an OJ and this:

Mexican Breakfast £9.95 Corn tortillas, spicy tomato sauce, black beans, melting cheese, sweetcorn, chorizo, fried eggs or scrambled and avocado salsa. – Veggie option with chestnut mushrooms £9.95

Veggie option for Benj! They were both really lovely and surprisingly filling, but yes I was in mourning for the dish I should have got. Luckily, as Ben reminded me, we were about to have 2 weeks of absolutely incredible American food so it really didn’t matter hahahah. He’s so wise.

I think breakfast came to about £28 with our drinks, so we paid up and got the heck out of there. Time had gone by insanely fast and we literally had time for me to douse myself in some perfume in duty free and buy some Pringles and a bar of Galaxy before it was boarding time!

Onto the plane we got and we were SO RIDICULOUSLY LUCKY because no one got on the seat next to us! We were sat with bated breath with about 10 minutes to go until take off, waiting for the announcement to say that the doors had closed but not quite believing our luck, but it was true! Honestly, this, plus the fab service and amazing food, made this the best flight I’ve ever taken. It was so good. We flew with United and got barGAIN prices of £321 each, with luggage on top. It was just a great flight! Seats felt spacious, entertainment was ace, and there was so much food! And I could put my feet up and spread out and we didn’t have to ask anyone when I needed the loo woooo!

Benj demonstrating the extra space we had (I love this photo because of the creepy woman who thought we were taking a photo of her I guess hahaha)

First up we got a cheeky round of drinks, wine and beer, plus some pesto breadsticks which we demolished in about 3 seconds.

Benj was then bought his lacto-ovo meal which yet again was vegan haha vless him! This is an awful photo but Ben thinks it was some sort of aubergine and rice dish. He said it was nice! We were a bit gutted there was no pudding...but we’ll come back to that!

I had a choice of a few options and as usual the description was v difficult to decipher, just ‘pasta’ so I had to press the air steward for some more details. He then said the magic words ‘manicotti’ and ‘creamy sauce’ so I said YES PLEASE! Omg guys this was so good, it was 2 types of pasta, one filled with a creamy red pepper sauce and the other with a 4 cheese blend. I was so happy hahah! I saved my bread roll and butter for later because the pasta was so filling.

And then, about half an hour later we all got brought ice cream! What an absolute dream!

We passed the time in between food napping, watching movies and (in my case) food programmes on the IFE. I remember feeling slightly annoyed because it said that Will and Grace would be on our flight but it wasn’t. Rude. I also ate my Galaxy and we shared the Pringles. I then watched Oceans 8 and recommended it to Benj who watched it on the way back! Harmless fun I thought, I quite enjoyed it!

THEN we got super duper excited because we realised we were flying over the most beautiful, stunning mountains we’d ever seen (or never seen, because I’ve never seen anything like this before! ) we both freaked out and took it in turns to sit near the window just staring out. Honestly, it was incredible, and made us even more excited for our California adventure than we’d been before! If that’s even possible!

Me glued to the window!

We then got brought a little afternoon tea which was really nice! Benj got some Thai spiced snacks, a baguette and some crisps, fruit and a little cocoa cookie bite thingy.

I had a DELISH cheese and ham pretzel roll that was all warm and melty and greasy and yum, with some crisps and a kit kat. This was all really nice and I was starving so ate it all, plus my cheese and crackers from lunch haha!

We watched some more TV and i read some saved trippies on The Dibb on my phone, and before we knew it we were landing! The flight went crazy fast even though it was longer than Orlando, I think because we were so comfy and had so much room. Ahhhh I really hope we have this good luck on future flights!

We landed earlier than expected, at 1.10pm (we were scheduled to land about 1.30pm)

Welcome to SF! We were soooooooo excited!

We went through immigration and waited quite a long time but it wasn’t too bad, then picked up our cases and sorted our phones onto the airport WiFi so we could figure out what was happening with our shuttle. We’d pre-booked a shuttle with Supershuttle as they seemed to be the main player in California. I had concise directions on my phone to the bit we needed to catch the shuttle so we followed the directions and after going a bit wrong, found the right place. It was a bit of a mess to be honest, a very disinterested woman was sort of casually directing people but we didn’t know what was going on and it was super confusing. It was also quite hot outside and generally stressful with our big cases too! We queued up and gave her our details but we weren't convinced it had done any good. Luckily, a guy who seemed much more switched on arrived, presumably to take over the shift, and us and a few other people waiting were led into a shaded area where he started taking details. I then got a text with our van number on which we thought was pretty clever, and the van then pulled up! So we just sort of gestured to the guy and to the van, and walked over and spoke to the driver who put our cases in the boot. And in we got! Phew. Another English couple from our flight got in the shuttle with us and that was it so nice and spacious.
And we were off! We drove into San Francisco and me and Ben were just glued to the windows looking out at the fabulous views

Our first glimpses of San Francisco architecture!

we had a chat with the couple about what their plans were which was nice, and then we dropped them off in Union Square. To be brutally honest we were both very happy we weren’t staying in Union Square; we’d deliberately avoided booking a hotel here as we’d just read bad things, plus we wanted to be closer to Fisherman’s Wharf even though this is a big tourist area. Seeing it with our own eyes confirmed this, it just wasn’t that nice and I was so so glad we’d stuck to our guns and not chosen to stay here.

With them dropped off it was up to Cow Hollow and to our home for the next 4 nights, Hotel Del Sol! We were dropped off outside and grabbed out bags; we didn’t have to tip the driver because i’d already done it online which I’d def recommend doing! The hotel looked SO CUTE and the street looked really nice and we were all bubbly and happy and excited! We dragged our cases into the little lobby and were greeted by a lovely man who asked all about us and gave us loads of tips about the area. There were also freshly baked cookies on the counter next to him. FRESHLY BAKED COOKIES. I was in love! He apologised that the lift wasn’t working but we said it was fine and it didn’t really bother us. He said he’d put us in a lovely big corner room which was music to my ears! We got the keys and headed up to our room which was so nice and spacious and ahhhhh! We dumped our stuff and rested for a minute, but then we realised the WiFi was really bad Which was a bit of a bummer because I knew we’d need it when we were in the room for researching stuff etc. I went out onto the corridor to see if WiFi was stronger anywhere else and it was, so I rang down to the front desk to explain the situation and the guy was so lovely and told me to just come down, grab another key, and check if the Wifi was better in another room and we could move. What a babe.

So we went downstairs and got the key, went into the new room, and it was a much stronger WiFi signal as closer to the front desk. It wasn’t quite as nice a room as our original one but it was still lovely so we decided to go for it.

Testing out the hotel hammocks in between the room switching! (Chandler from Friends; 'Oh I'm sorry, am I getting in the way of all the room switching fun! ? ')

So! After all this palava we could actually relax and freshen up once we were all settled in our new room. I don't seem to have any photos from this first day of the room, I might have some to pop in later but for now here's a pic I borrowed from online!

We changed and then headed out to explore!

Ready to go

It was still pretty early at this point and this time was like an extra bonus half day due to our early flight, so we had to make the most of it! We walked out of our hotel and turned right towards the ocean We tried to get our bearings as we walked, and it helped that we’d been on Google earth a lot checking out the ‘hood!

We walked towards Fisherman’s Wharf and turned onto this huuuuge beautiful green park area, which was filled with people walking their dogs and out jogging and just sitting on the grass chilling and ahhhh it was just perfect!

It was at this moment that we basically fell in love with San Francisco hahaha, it sounds silly but oh my god it was just so lovely and chilled and I said to Ben I want to live here and get home from work and take our dog out to this park! We could see the Golden Gate Bridge right there across the water which was pretty spectacular so we took some photos of that and then carried on walking through the park, down along the water to Fisherman’s Wharf (via Google maps - Ben’s contract meant he had FREE 3/4G the whole trip which was amazing and we hadn’t known about it til we got there! I had to pay £5 a day haha boooo, I did quite a few times because I wanted to update my IG stories haha but having Ben’s for free was an amazing perk!) We passed Ghiradelli Square which was exciting to see as we had plans to visit there later on in our trip

It was quite chilly walking along the water and I was glad I had my denim jacket on! It was really nice though and we felt super safe, we did go a bit of a scenic route but actually it was really helpful to get our bearings. After about 15 minutes we emerged out onto a big pavement area which we realised was Fisherman’s Wharf, yay! It was quite busy with a real buzz and it felt like a fun place to be. We hadn’t realised how big it was, it’s huge! We sort of thought it was just the Pier 39 area but that’s huge in itself, and there’s also lots of streets with cute little shops and restaurants on all around that we wanted to explore! We said we’d definitely need to come back at least one more time as this was our only planned evening here! We were both feeling tied already though (it was like 6pm haha) so we weren’t feeling the full Fisherman’s Wharf experience but we wanted to explore everything.

I was absolutely loving all the beautiful fresh seafood they sell in the little stalls along the road! Check out these lobster rolls! Pricey though, eeekkk!

They sold crab melts, calamari, fried shrimp and fries, and of course chowder! As I think we all know I’m a food obsessive so I just spent ages staring at all the menus and the food in the display cabinets! So so fresh and it all smelt amazeballs.

We wandered up to Pier 39 and again, decided we’d need to come back for an afternoon to go in all the shops and stuff. I thought it would be really touristy and cringe but actually it had a really nice atmosphere and the pier itself had a really great vibe. We were loving it!

We walked all the way through the pier to the back and stood looking out at the sun setting over the water, with Alcatraz right in front of us and the sound of the sea lions behind us. We honestly couldn’t believe we were actually there! It felt so surreal that earlier that day we’d been in London, and now here we were looking at all these iconic sights with the most incredible sun set in front of us. I was a bit overcome with emosh! We took some cute selfies

Before going round the corner to see the sealions. Ahhh they were amazing and the smell wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined haha! We stood there for about 10 minutes watching them all playfight and push each other off the boards, and we read the plaques on the walls behind them because I realised I actually had no idea how they got there!

(That sunset tho!)

It was about 6.30 by this point and we were both flagging, so decided to grab some dinner then Uber back to the hotel and chill. Our planned dinner was Boudin and we were both still super up for this so we headed out of Pier 39 and into the big flagship Boudin. It was a bit confusing as we weren’t sure where we needed to go, but after realising one way was the posh restaurant upstairs, we headed left to get in the queue for the bakery. As someone who is painfully indecisive this could have been a very stressful experience, as the queue was moving quickly and there was no time to be umming and ahhing when you got to the front. LUCKILY I’d been researching this for months and knew exactly what I wanted. One clam chowder in a bread bowl and a diet coke pleasseeeeee! Benj got tomato soup in a bread bowl and we also ordered a grilled cheese half sandwich because it just sounded really good.

We paid and then split up; I waited with my receipt, and Benj went to find a table with strict instructions to ‘get a good one’.

I browsed the store while I waited! They had the NICEST foodie stuff, I was in heaven!

It was a bit tense when I collected my order because I’m a very clumsy person and there were a lot of bowls of hot liquid bobbing about on my tray. I managed to make it to Benj though and he’d got a great little table for 2 with a view into the bakery, yay!

Oh my good god. That sourdough bread though. It was DELICIOUS. And the chowder has a really lovely, rich flavour that was exactly as I’d hoped. I was in heaven!

Ben really enjoyed his tomato soup too, I tried it a bit and again it was super rich. Just what we needed after our full on travel day!

We were both defeated though because there was soooooooo much bread, I left most of it but Ben bravely ate the lid of his!

At this point we were both exhausted and I absolutely couldn’t face walking back up that hill haha so we called an Uber which picked us up just outside Boudin, soooo CONVENIENT! It was only about $8 too (we did this a lot during our time in SF!)

We got back to our lovely room and ahhhh it was so nice to take all my makeup off and get into bed I fell asleep immediately, it was only 8.30 but I couldn’t go on any more! Benj was not long after me after updating our friends on Whatsapp What an amazing travel day!

Tomorrow: We take a Hop on, Hop off tour of SF, see the Golden Gate Bridge, and go on a trip to sunny Sausalito with a fabulous wine-filled lunch!

[colzo100]

Great report and detail!

We are looking to do this trip in a few years so I'll follow this with great anticipation.

[IlDivoette]

Loving this already, you have such great enthusiasm .

We are doing SF as part of our trip in June, so am really looking forward to hearing about the rest of this leg of your journey. Great tips for Boudin as well and look forward to hearing about the hop on/off bus.

[Sam_Smith]

Great start! We are flying a United to LAX in June so looking forward to reading more

[Tinkerbellm6]

Looks like an amazing start! I'm drooling at the sight of that lobster roll and bread bowl chowder! Quick question...how do you save trippies to your phone for the plane? I would love to do this for future trips.

[florida mad]

WOW, what a great travel day. You certainly packed loads in. Look forward to reading more

[oh_darling]

Originally Posted by colzo100

Great report and detail!

We are looking to do this trip in a few years so I'll follow this with great anticipation.

See more...

Thank you so much! Ahhh how exciting! Well I hope it helps you with your planning, I'll try to include any tips etc I can remember! xxx

[oh_darling]

Originally Posted by IlDivoette

Loving this already, you have such great enthusiasm .

We are doing SF as part of our trip in June, so am really looking forward to hearing about the rest of this leg of your journey. Great tips for Boudin as well and look forward to hearing about the hop on/off bus.

See more...

Thank you hahah! I love sharing our experiences

Ahhh so exciting that you're going to SF! I'm so glad you're finding it useful, I'll try and include tips etc where I can xxx

[oh_darling]

Originally Posted by Sam_Smith

Great start! We are flying a United to LAX in June so looking forward to reading more

See more...

Ahhhh we thought United were great! So glad you're enjoying xxx

[oh_darling]

Originally Posted by Tinkerbellm6

Looks like an amazing start! I'm drooling at the sight of that lobster roll and bread bowl chowder! Quick question...how do you save trippies to your phone for the plane? I would love to do this for future trips.

See more...

Hey lovely! I downloaded an app called Pocket, it's great! Tried lots of others but this one is super simple and works so well!

Omg the lobster rolls looked incredible, can you believe I didn't get one!? hahaha xxx